Explaining the Wealth of Nations

By

James Q. Wilson

Updated Nov. 1, 2000 12:01 a.m. ET

N o one who wishes to understand the great modern transformation of the industrialized world -- the immense rise in human wealth even with an increase in population -- can do so without studying the remarkable scholarship of the great British historian and anthropologist Alan Macfarlane.

His 1978 book, "The Origins of English Individualism," explains the rise of industrialism in England in ways quite different from what earlier scholars had set forth. In the old view, of Max Weber, R.H. Tawney and Lawrence...